SO, a new year at the top end of English football has started just as the last one did. Chelsea over the hill and out of sight at the head of the Premiership and destined for the championship crown once again as surely as night follows day.

Has one team ever before exerted such a suffocating stranglehold over this country's flagship league as the one being currently applied by Jose Mourinho and his galaxy of stars at Stamford Bridge? The answer to that question is a resounding `No'.

Liverpool, without question, were the best team in England by a country mile throughout most of the seventies. Two decades later it was Alex Ferguson and Manchester United who ruled the roost. But even at their peak, the Reds of Anfield and Old Trafford never dominated our top-flight football as ruthlessly as Chelsea are doing today.

To get some sort of measure of the depth of Chelsea's dominance over domestic football and the awesome strength of Mourinho's playing resources, it helps to turn the clock back almost a week to their Premiership fixture at the City of Manchester Stadium.

That match was of particular significance because it marked the half-way point of the current campaign.

Message

By the end of it - won 1-0 by Mourinho's team - Chelsea had amassed 52 points from 19 Premiership fixtures of which 17 had been won outright.

Their nearest rivals - United - had won five fewer matches in collecting 41 points from the same number of games over the first half of the season.

What was also significant about Chelsea's visit to Eastlands last week was that Mourinho used the game to send out a chilling message to any Premiership manager plotting to dislodge his club from its lofty perch. And the message was all about the unique strength and quality of the senior squad the Portuguese puppet-master has assembled at Stamford Bridge.

For that match at Eastlands, former City favourite Shaun Wright-Phillips - a £21m acquisition and England international - wasn't even in the 16-man Chelsea squad. Forwards Arjen Robben and Hernan Crespo, who could both be stars of the coming World Cup finals, couldn't even make Mourinho's starting line-up and had to be content with places on the bench.

The point which Mourinho was trying to make to his rival managers with his team selection at Eastlands was crystal clear. "Whatever you've got, we've got more and we've got better."

So when did it all start? When did the Chelsea dominance we see today take root and transform a club with a reputation for being perpetual under-achievers into the unstoppable force which has established such a vice-like grip over the English Premiership?

We can pin-point the exact day when the balance of power in domestic football began to shift from Old Trafford and Highbury. It was July 1, 2003. The day that a little-known Russian by the name of Roman Abramovich breezed into London to buy Chelsea lock, stock and barrel at a cost of £150m.

No-one knew for sure exactly how much the secretive Abramovich was worth or how much he was prepared to lavish on his new toy. We didn't have to wait long for the answer.

Within six weeks of taking control at Stamford Bridge, Abramovich had spent £110m of his personal fortune in acquiring new players. It was - by some distance - the biggest spending spree in the history of professional football in this country.

And the spending by the Russian with bottomless pockets didn't stop there. In his two-and-a-half years as Chelsea's owner, Abramovich has now forked out a staggering £250m on new players plucked from every corner of the globe. No club on the planet - not even a giant like Real Madrid - has come even close to matching that outlay over the same period.

Of course, it is easy to say that Chelsea have used Abramovich's millions to buy the runaway success they have enjoyed over the past eighteen months. Easy - but inaccurate. Money on its own does not guarantee a Premiership title. Over the past five years Liverpool and Newcastle United have spent countless millions on players with sky-high reputations but the championship title continues to elude them.

The turning point for Chelsea came in the summer of 2004 when Abramovich decided that a new manager was needed at Stamford Bridge who could make better use of his limitless financial resources.

His first choice was England head coach Sven-Goran Eriksson who surprisingly - given the circumstances and the money available - rejected Chelsea's advances. But Abramovich had better luck the second time around. So, as the start of season 2004-05 approached out went Claudio `Tinkerman' Ranieri and in came `The Special One' - the young Portuguese manager Mourinho who had quickly earned himself a world-wide reputation by masterminding FC Porto's Champions' League triumph.

What Mourinho has achieved in his first 18 months at Stamford Bridge cannot be over-estimated. The Premiership title in his first season and a second successive one about to follow, barring a collapse of Devon Loch magnitude. It just doesn't get any better than that.

Yes, Mourinho has been fortunate. With Abramovich providing the financial backing, he could quite literally buy any player in the world if he had a mind to.

But Mourinho's real magic - the `special' gift he keeps referring to - is the ability to mould a group of talented individuals, with sky-high profiles and egos to match, into an effective fighting unit.

And that is what Chelsea have become under Mourinho. A team in the true sense of the word. When they can, they will win in style. When they can't, they will grind out a result.

That togetherness and desire engendered by their manager - rather than Abramovich's millions - is what sets Chelsea apart today from any other team in the Premiership.

Mourinho himself hit the nail on the head only the other day when he gave his reasons for his team's total dominance over England's top-flight division. "It has nothing to do with the power of money," he said.

"It is the power of the players that has got us where we are. They are a group of friends who are prepared to fight for each other."

So can the ever-widening gap be bridged? Can the likes of Manchester United, Arsenal or Liverpool raise their own bar to the level attained by Chelsea and prevent the Premiership remaining the one-horse race it is today?

Power

All those three great clubs will strive to reach that goal, you can be sure of that.

But catching and overtaking Chelsea within the next five years will, I suspect, be out of their hands.

The seat of power in English football will remain in a fashionable corner of London as long as that `special' manager and a Russian billionaire stay on as the brains and the money behind the scenes at Stamford Bridge.

Mourinho might begin to yearn for a new adventure with another club in another country. He might even succeed Eriksson as England's new manager after the World Cup finals.

Abramovich might tire of his toy and take his roubles elsewhere. Perhaps a man who can buy anything is always on the look-out for a new plaything to keep him amused.

But if I was Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger or Rafael Benitez, I wouldn't be holding my breath waiting for either Mourinho or Abramovich to jump ship. Something tells me that both men are at Stamford Bridge for the duration.

Chelsea's dominance over the Premiership is here to stay - at least for the foreseeable future. We might not like it but we had better get used to it.